


Angels In Marble

by biextroverts



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/F, Muses, Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-17 22:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11278341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biextroverts/pseuds/biextroverts
Summary: Cosima falls a little bit in love with all of her subjects, but with one more so than all the rest.





	Angels In Marble

**Author's Note:**

> I've been originalbroadwaycosima on here for over a year and a half now, and yet I still haven't published anything about Cosima, or even about Orphan Black. I thought it was time to rectify that.
> 
> This is a rewrite of "She Sees Angels," which I published maybe two years back on Tumblr, but this version is longer and also better, so.

          Cosima didn't make a habit of falling in love with her muses.

          She fell a little bit in love with everyone, of course – it was her secret, it was what made her such a prolific painter. You couldn't make art without passion for the craft, and you couldn't paint portraits without passion for the people. Not successful portraits, anyways, and, if the critics were anything to go by, her portraits were successful. And she did love all her muses – the wanderers, the wives, the working women, all with _such_ inner beauty, all with _such_ interesting stories to tell as they sat on their stools being painted, about young daughters waiting at home with overbearing grandmothers as their mothers tried, and tried, and failed to escape a lifestyle of simultaneous excess and need, about inattentive husbands with secrets and clandestine affairs with friends' spouses in wives' unfulfilling attempts at revenge, about hungry men and running away and angels and things about which Cosima doesn't want to ask too many questions, but finds fascinating all the same. But Delphine is different. Not because she is not interesting – _god_ , she is – but because she is … alluring, is that the word? Because she is appealing for more reasons than simply because she is a person, and an individual, and wonderfully, wonderfully human.

          Cosima doesn't know what drew Delphine to her studio. Her muses are varied in almost everything, but, despite their diversity, they are almost invariably poor, almost invariably interested in the coin Cosima offers them for sitting for her (she doesn't say “posing for her,” because she doesn't pose them; she prefers to capture them as they are, for people are at the zenith of their beauty in their natural state). Delphine, on the other hand, has no need for coin. Cosima is not sure if Delphine is nobility, but she is certainly society, and it shows in everything about her – soft waves of blonde hair, untraumatized brown eyes, pale skin unburnt by the sun, throaty voice not clogged with smoke, bearing poised, refined, gowns new and beautiful, though Delphine must be brave, as well as moneyed, to wear them to this part of the city, where thieves lurk on every side street and in every alley, and where the gutters are filled with muck and piss and refuse that could ruin such a lovely dress in seconds. When Cosima had spelled out her usual deal – forty percent of the coin she made off the painting, minus the cost of materials – Delphine had shaken her head and put her hand out to refuse the offer.

          “Keep your money,” Delphine had said, her voice lilting with the French accent that was perhaps the most distinctive marker of her wealth. “I would just like to be painted.” And Cosima had obliged, taking Delphine down the narrow indoor staircase from her parlor to her studio and instructing her to sit down on the stool and taking her through the process of the painting, from sketching to blocking out the canvas to selling the completed piece. But she couldn't work when Delphine was in the room – Delphine shone like a sun that one had to look at, and Cosima found herself drawn in to what she had to say, conversing instead of merely listening. Delphine is educated, more so than one would expect for a young woman even of good breeding, and she dreams of going places in life, and her ideas demand discussion, demand inquiry, especially because Cosima really does want to know more about life sciences, about what Charles Darwin is saying in the lecture halls at Cambridge that is “revolutionizing what we know about ourselves, and about all creatures.” Cosima sketches when she can, in the moments when Delphine is searching for a word and there is a pause in the flow of lively discourse between them, and does the rest at night, from memory – no difficult feat, when she spends the daytime hours, the hours when she _should_ be working, simply staring at Delphine's face.

          Her progress on the painting, even once it gets to painting stage, is slower than Cosima can honestly explain, not without blushing and stuttering and worrying about sodomy laws, even though she hasn't done anything wrong and, as a woman, is mercifully protected from doing anything illegal. There is no good way to tell a woman, especially a woman with whom one has only a professional, although admittedly friendly, relationship, that you have not found the time, even in your long hours together for the purpose, to paint her, so consumed have you been with looking at her and talking to her and thinking about her, about touching her, holding her, being with her in the way that, if you were men instead of women, could end you up in jail. She comes up with flimsier and flimsier excuses for her slowness with the painting each evening when Delphine asks after its progress, and each evening Cosima wonders if this will be the evening when the excuse finally stretches Delphine's suspension of disbelief so far it breaks. It never is, although Delphine has to know they're weak excuses; she's clever, and not much gets past her. The question, then, is not how long it will take until Delphine's suspension of disbelief breaks, but how long it will be until she admits it has, and what she will make of Cosima, and what she will do then.

          It takes four months – fall turning to winter and bearing forth a steady snowfall that demands Delphine dine with Cosima at her little kitchen table in her little flat above the studio. Cosima's not a cook, but she does what she can with the vegetables in her pantry and a _something –_ it's best in this part of town not to press the matter too hard – thankfully purchased from the butcher's that morning. It's not too bad, if she says so herself, though not the identifiable meat she's certain Delphine is used to. Delphine doesn't seem inclined to complain, either, eating quietly and finishing all she's served before she speaks.

          “So, how long does it usually take you to complete a painting? I know you told me when first I came to you, but I can't remember now.”

          Cosima stills halfway through a bite of – she'll call it chicken and hope it is – and swallows, hard. “Three months, or thereabouts,” she says.

          “And how long have I been coming 'round?”

          “I don't know.” She knows exactly. “Three and a half months, perhaps? Or four?”

          “Longer than usual for one of your subjects.”

          “That's a fair assessment.”

          “May I ask why that's so?”

          “You may.”

          “Are you going to answer me?”

          “Well, that's another question.”

          Delphine laughs. “I don't mind that it's taking you some time, of course. I'm only curious.”

          “Me, too.” They are not, Cosima suspects, talking about the same thing; Cosima is curious about how Delphine's mouth would feel against hers, and her curiosity is the answer to Delphine's – _I've been slow to paint because I have been quick and persistent to dream_.

          Delphine's brow furrows. “You don't know?”

          “Oh! No, I do. I was thinking of something else.”

          “Then what is your reason for taking such time in painting me?”

          “I'm wrapped up in my thoughts, as I was just then.”

          “Oh?” Delphine reaches out a hand, and lays it over Cosima's across the table. Cosima looks at Delphine's face; her smile is teasing, knowing. “What thoughts, if you would deign to enlighten me?”

          “I can't, with words.”

          “With what, then?”

          “With –” Cosima turns the hand beneath Delphine's over, intertwines their fingers. Delphine looks down with something like surprise, but not displeasure. “With touch. Of hands, or …” She swallows several times, attempts to wet her dry tongue. “Mouths.”

          Delphine stands up, and Cosima's hand in hers forces Cosima to stand, too. They move to beside the table. Delphine's free hand finds Cosima's hip. “Mouths?” Delphine asks.

          “I –”

          And then they are kissing, and it is like art, like looking at all art ever made all at once, like understanding what every painter meant when they painted their masterpieces, and what everyone else on Earth thinks those masterpieces mean, their individual, human interpretations. It is like conversation, but silent, and somehow better, and it is like finishing a painting, only, will she ever have to finish her portrait of Delphine now, now that she has something better, has the woman herself, to keep in her heart? She doesn't know the answer, and she doesn't care, right now; right now, all that matters is the present, all-consuming joy of being human.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments of any kind are much appreciated!


End file.
